Follow by Email

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Heavenly Mandate

Finding Inspiration,

The Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953, after 3 years of negotiations, and mostly stalemated along the 38th Parallel, where it had started. (Russian backed and American backed Korean armies had divided along the 38th parallel after the Yalta conference.) It was agreed that a full peace treaty negotiation would begin in 3 months, that became 6 months in Geneva, and included French-Indochina by then. Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles refused to discuss Korean peace with Chou En Lai. In 1956 it became clear why, as the US abrogated paragraph 13(d), agreeing that no party would change the balance of forces or weaponry on the Korean peninsula. The US moved in every sort of nuclear weapon it could mobilize, targeting both Russia and China. The US has kept this forward nuclear fire-station ever since then. What do you think "completely denuclearized Korean peninsula" means to North Koreans? Wikipedia has the historical timeline here.

"Veterans of past negotiations with North Korea also expressed concern on Sunday about the possibility that Mr. Kim could demand that in exchange for denuclearization, the United States must withdraw its “nuclear umbrella” that protects South Korea from adversaries." (duh)

U.S. and North Korean officials huddled in the Korean truce village of Panmunjom for a second day Monday, hammering out details of a proposed summit amid media reports that South Korean President Moon Jae-in may attend the historic meeting.

​

[This might move blindingly fast. Who is at the table, and who is NOT at the table? According to Wikipedia, the Korean Armistice was signed by a North Korean General, commanding North Korean and Chinese-"volunteer" forces, and by an American General, commanding UN forces. No Chinese or Russian signatures were on there.Korea has been a country for over a thousand years. "North Korea" and "South Korea"​ are de-facto countries, though both sides have always declared that reunification was an essential objective. During the cold-war, Kim Il Sung effectively played Russia and China against each other for aid. Grandpa Kim did not like Mao and did not like China, and that's normal for Koreans, all Asians, in fact. China was always the overlord. China remains the main long-term threat to Korea, together or divided. Xi Jinping knows that. Trump knows that. Kissinger, not dead yet, knows Trump. Trump can be Nixon in Korea and cut out China, like Nixon went to China and cut out Russia. I see the signatories to the armistice there to undo it, and the heads of state of "both Koreas", able to make reunification arrangements, and I don't see past hated overlords of Korea, China and Japan, at the table.]

"North Korean leader Kim Jong-un finds it hard to trust US President Donald Trump’s assertions that the US would not seek to undermine his rule after Pyongyang gets rid of all its nukes, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said... Kim reportedly reiterated his pledge to de-nuclearize, but cast doubt on Washington’s promise to provide him with security guarantees that the North seeks." (I guess he can't unsee that bayonet up Gadhafi's bleeding rectum.)

So what guaranty is structural, certain, and not based upon promises, which the powerful side can break when it feels like it?

​ Moon had been blindsided by Trump’s decision, but he was moving to reassert control over what he still hopes could be a historic breakthrough for peace on the Korean peninsula. Human history, one of Moon’s advisers told me recently in Seoul, “is ... governed by certain law of heavenly mandate. There is a time for peace—that is a dictate of nature. And Moon Jae In is following that heavenly mandate.”’... “Nobel Prize to Trump, peace to Koreans,” Chung In Moon mused in the afterglow of the inter-Korean summit, noting President Moon’s strengths as a “good listener,” an “efficient facilitator,” and an “open-minded guy.” President Roh, who both Moon Jae In and Chung In Moon worked for, had “clear historical vision,” he said, but Roh “really cared about his name in history. Moon Jae In, he doesn’t care. He’s very pragmatic.”

​There is a rush to the exits in Italian bonds, as Italian president refuses a qualified eurosceptic finance minister, says he will appoint a "technocratic government" and the parliament won't permit that, so more elections, this fall to next spring, sometime.Too much uncertainty. A lot needs to happen​. The Euro is sick and getting sicker.

Bitcoin mining is crashing more electricity markets than just Venezuela. Look at hydroelectric power in Washington State:

Chelan County, along with neighboring Douglas and Grant counties, has been at the center of the U.S. Bitcoin boom since 2012, when the region’s ultracheap hydropower began attracting cryptocurrency “miners.”... By the end of this year, according to some estimates, the Mid-Columbia Basin could account for as much as 30 percent of the global output of new Bitcoin and large shares of other digital currencies, such as Litecoin and Ethereum... By February, the Bitcoin “gold rush,” as Wright calls it, had become so overwhelming that Chelan County PUD declared a three-month moratorium on new mines to determine whether the county can absorb even a fraction of that demand. But answering that question was more complex than the utility anticipated — and at the recent hearing, the commission voted to extend the freeze another three months.

Kids across the world, poor to rich, pose with "their favorite toy". It is easy to feel the gut punch from the poorest of these children. In the middle (below us) they like smartphones and tablets. Though the poorest kids have a trash item like an old bike tire, the richest kids like stuffed animals best. What are the different forms of poverty? What is the need being met? (If you need to be cuddled more, you will like a stuffed animal that you can cuddle.)

Mediterranean kids can't afford to eat the Mediterranean diet any more. They eat sodas, fats, carbs, salt and sugar like Americans and Mexicans. they are fat and sick, too. Swedish kids are coming the closest at the moment, but all kids, everywhere are losing ground to processed "foods" with long shelf lives, junk calories. Fresh food is priced out of the market, and nobody grows their own any more. Where would they grow it?

40 Years Ago This Man Sold Everything To Buy A Bike And Travel 6,000 Miles From India To Sweden To See His Love

Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia was born an “untouchable” in a remote village of India in 1949. According to prophecy, told by an astrologer after Kumar’s birth, he was meant to marry a musician woman from a faraway country, who is born under the zodiac sign of Taurus and owns a forest.